Final Fantasy VI, the sixth entry in the nuclear-bomb-explodingly popularFinal Fantasy series, served as the third and final 16-bit entry of the series. Square originally marketed outside Japan as Final Fantasy III because only two other games of the franchise had ever seen an international release.

One thousand years prior to the events of the game's main story, three deities found themselves locked in a bitter and bloody war. During this "War of the Magi", the deities transformed ordinary humans into magical beings known as "Espers" to serve as soldiers; those Espers created armies by teaching magic to the general populace. As all sides wielded the awesome power of magic, the ensuing destruction pushed the world to the very brink of oblivion.

Fast forward to the modern day: humanity has hunted the Espers into extinction and rebuilt itself with the aid of steampunk technology. At the time of the game's events, Emperor Gestahl of the Gestahlian Empire has launched a campaign to resurrect the forbidden art of magic, combine it with the force of modern machinery, and create a new power he calls "Magitek". Gestahl aims to perfect Magitek and use its power to conquer the world. Only a ragtag resistance movement called the Returners, who receive secret funding from the king of Figaro, stand in the Empire's way.

During a search for a long-dormant Esper, a young Imperial soldier named Terra Branford breaks free from the influence of a Mind-Control Device placed on her by the empire. She awakens to discover that she has both no memories and, somehow, the ability to cast magic. Unbeknownst to her, Terra's liberation from the Empire will become the catalyst for both Gestahl and the Returners to make their move, which will change the face of the world as they know it.

With fourteen playable characters, Final Fantasy VI boasts one of the largest rosters of any RPG of its era (to this day, it still holds the record among the main series Final Fantasy games for most playable characters) — and it provides nearly all of them with unique spotlights in the plot, to boot.

Square originally released Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo, but has since ported it twice (both times under the original title). The first port ended up on the original PlayStation; while it added a number of CGI cutscenes throughout the game, it made no other alterations to the game (aside from slowdown and sound emulation issues). The other port, released on the Game Boy Advance, was much more technically competent: while it had no additional cutscenes, it included new dungeons, gear, and Espers; it also featured a brand-new translation (the PS1 port recycled Woolsey's script) that retained many of Woolsey's original lines and all of his name changes, stuck closer to the original script, and uncensored certain elements (while censoring others that had been uncensored in previous versions). The GBA port also fixed numerous bugs, rebalanced the battle system, made the graphics easier on the eyes, and featured slightly remixed music, the last of which remains a source of contention for some fans. Square re-released the SNES version on the Virtual Console in Japan, Europe and North America, re-released the PlayStation port on the PlayStation Store, and released an enhanced version of the game for mobile devices.

For tropes related to the Characters, go to the Character Sheet. New character trope examples should go there too.

Final Fantasy VI contains examples of the following tropes:

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A - C

Action Bomb: The usual ability of enemy bombs. Strago can get it as a Lore and Gau can do this when he imitates a Bomb.

Action Prologue: Biggs and Wedge escort one of the main characters, only shown as ??????, to attack the city of Narshe. When you complete that, you're still in danger and have to escape the city.

Actually Pretty Funny: Setzer finds himself amused when Celes hustles him via the use of Edgar's two-headed coin.

Cyan losing his family when Doma is poisoned. Imagine, you, one of the finest knights in the realm, having no power to save your beloved ones. It gets so bad that later in the World of Ruins, an evil spirit grows powerful by feeding on his agony.

Strago completely lost his mind after the world come to its end and he become separated from his only family, his grand-daughter Relm. Shadow probably is like this too, if the WMG that he's Relm's father is proven true.

Aerith and Bob: The royal twins of Figaro, Edgar and Sabin. In the Japanese version, Sabin is named Mash. This is just a nickname, however, and his real name is Macías, which is a real Spanish name.

Afterlife Express: And the Phantom Train really doesn't care for its living passengers...

A.I. Roulette: Damned Coliseum AI. You can avoid them by using Shadow or Setzer, whose specials won't be used, if you're careful what magic they learn, but if you've been training a character with Espers then each spell is another option your character could randomly choose. Gogo and Umaro can forgo this, because Umaro always attacks and Gogo's action menu can be customized.

All-Natural Gem Polish: Magicite stones are shaped like rupees, reflecting the crystal theme of the series. In Dissidia, the magicite Terra finds is slightly more abstract.

An Aesop: Your life doesn't have to have some grand impact on the world to be worth something, just having love and friendship and the will to continue living and looking for them makes it special and worth protecting.

Anti-Climax: The Warring Triad are supposed to be the source of all magic. The party is forced to fight them in order to reach Kefka, and the party members express confusion when they discover that they are not load-bearing bosses and killing them has had no effect on magic. It turns out Kefka drained enough of their power to be able to sustain magic on his own.

Apocalypse How: Planetary Societal Collapse, with a risk of Total Extinction if left unchecked. At the beginning of the World of Ruin, Cid says that the world itself is slowly dying, as if plants and animals have lost the will to live, and while most of the towns still exist, a few have been wiped out and the surviving towns are much less populous. Then the party pisses Kefka off even more, and he decides to screw it and go for annihilating the universe.

Apocalypse Wow: The creation of the World of Ruin, which also includes an apocalypse montage.

Arbitrary Headcount Limit: This is the first Final Fantasy that allows the player to form a party from whatever characters are available, instead of having the plot shuffle them around. It becomes most noticeable on the Floating Continent, where you're only allowed to bring three characters instead of the usual four with no explanation. True, it's so that you have room for Shadow and, later, Celes, if you didn't bring her to begin with, but it's still a little jarring.

Aristocrats Are Evil: The nameless blueblood who lives in the mansion in South Figaro is responsible for giving the Empire vital information in exchange for money, thus allowing them to take over the city. Speaking to him later as Locke during the city's occupation reveals he regrets his decision. Much later on in Jidoor, however, the citizens actually went so far as to remove the entire lower class from their city, likely by force, and they find the world's destruction as being nothing more than a concept to make art about.

The Paladin's Shield, which gives very, very good bonuses, and immunities on top of the already high defense. Have fun uncursing it from the Cursed Shield by fighting 256 times with it equipped, which is the worst shield in the game with lots of negative status changes.

The Snow Scarf has a defense rating of 128. For a point of comparison, the Behemoth Suit has the second-highest armor rating aside from the Reed Cloak (see below under Imp Equipment) and has a defense rating of only 96. Unfortunately it's exclusive to Mog, Gau and Umaro. Gau and Mog are Difficult but AwesomeLethal Joke Characters, and Umaro is balanced out by poor usefulness otherwise.

Artifact Mook: There's the Veldt, which contains every enemy you previously encountered (to allow obtaining their skills in a specific form of Mega Manning done by the characer Gau). This includes soldiers, elite soldiers, and enemies said by the story to be already extinct. Some bosses also appear in the Veldt, such as the Behemoth King and the Holy Dragon.

At the Opera Tonight: The famous opera sequence, where Celes performs and the others watch before an inevitable boss fight. It's a ploy to get their hands on an airship. (If you take Sabin, he will even ask why everyone is singing.)

Auction: You can participate in the auctions held at Jidoor's Auction House to get Magicite and relics, although there are also a couple of items that you will never be able to purchase.

Audience Murmurs: When the Opera gets derailed with the unforeseen entry of Ultros, Locke & co.

Autobots, Rock Out!: Most of the "Dancing Mad" remixes, both official and by fans, use the guitars through out the track and usually add an additional guitar solo segment in the (relatively) peaceful part of the 4th Movement.

Awesome but Impractical: Meltdown, Quake, Tornado and the Crusader esper do great damage, but hit your own characters as well. Meltdown and Quake can be avoided with specific character builds.

Cyan's Swordtech/Bushido moves. The first attack, Dispatch/Fang, is likely the only one a player will use, as charging up for his other attacks takes a very long time and prevents entering any other actions for the rest of the party while doing so. Averted in the mobile/iOS version, where the player can pick a technique and Cyan will charge it up on his own time while the rest of the battle proceeds.

The Ultima spell can easily hit the damage cap of 9999, but costs 80 MP, which is 8% of the maximum MP a character can have. There are items that reduce the cost of spellsnote The Economizer, in particular, which reduces all spell costs to 1, but generally, there are more efficient ways to deal lots of damage. On the other hand, absorbing magic from enemies is so easy (the Osmose spell in this game verges on being a Game Breaker) that some players may not care.

Shadow is this when you meet him in Kohlingen. Hiring him for the trip to Zozo is arguably more trouble than it's worth, given that you have to keep a slot open for him in the party, he immediately ditches you if you go back to Narshe to switch party members, and he seems to have a much higher chance of leaving than he did when he was traveling with Sabin and Cyan, forcing you to complete the Zozo dungeon with a three-person party, hike all the way back to Narshe to replace him, orreload a save from before he left.

III Atma Weapon: "My name is Atma... I am pure energy... and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!"

III Atma: "I'm Atma... Left here since birth... Forgotten in the river of time... I've had an eternity to... Ponder the meaning of things... And now I have an answer..."

VI Ultima Weapon: "My name is Ultima... I am power both ancient and unrivaled... I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form... Feeble creatures of flesh... Your time is nigh!"

Also, Dummied Out from the game but still impressive is Czar Dragon's quote: "Mwa, ha ha... humans and their desires! I'm free at last! I bring you destruction... I bring you terror... I am Czar... Prepare yourselves!"

Kaiser Dragon: "Humans and your insatiable greed... Your lust for power leads always to a lust for blood... This place is a sanctuary for wayward souls... What business have you filthy creatures here? You slaughter my brethren, and befoul their rest with the profanity of your continued existence... You should not have come here. In the name of all dragonkind, I shall grant you the death you desire. I am the dealer of destruction... I am the font from which fear springs... I am Kaiser... And your time is at end."

Bad-Guy Bar: The South Figaro Inn. While it notably features Shadow and his monstrous dog, Interceptor, it also has several rough looking NPCs who wear eye-patches and bandanas, who are also used to portray drunkards, thieves, prisoners, and even ninjas.

The Bad Guy Wins: This is one of the most well known examples where the villain actually succeeds in taking over, or in this case, destroying the world. The entire last half of the game is dedicated to trying to undo it... and it comes at the cost of magic and Espers vanishing from the world forever, so even in death, Kefka managed to royally screw the planet over in another manner.

Everyone in Thamasa. Everyone in the town can use magic. They try to hide this fact from the outside world, but they do a terrible job of it once people actually come to the town. This is Played for Laughs, but due to the Crapsack World setting, they once had very good reason to hide their magical abilities from the world, since they were once persecuted for it (they were blamed for the War of the Magi).

The first guy you talk to in Zozo (right after the textbox that tells you the city's name fades away). "Zozo? Never heard of it."

Bag of Sharing: Taking into the account the timescale during the three scenario segments, this particular bag can transfer items across both space AND time.

Baleful Polymorph: Imp/Kappa form. There is specialized equipment that makes that form stronger, not to mention Cyan's infinite counter bug in his imp form. Add the Dragon Horn or Dragoon Boots and you'll acquire the dreaded Death God Dragoon Imp.

Bandit Mook: Harvester enemies in Zozo will steal from your party if you try to steal from them, later, there's the money stealing bears in Mt. Zozo.

Barrier Change Boss: Number 024 in the Magitek Research Facility and the Magic Master on the top of Cultists' Tower. Also, Kaiser Dragon, the Bonus Boss in the GBA remake.

Big Bad: Initially Emperor Gestahl, but ultimately Kefka. Although one could also argue that Kefka was the big bad all along, considering the fact that he was the most recurring villain throughout the game.

Big Boo's Haunt: The Phantom Train in the World of Balance. Later on, there is Darill's Tomb, Owzer's Mansion, and Dreamscape.

Bittersweet Ending: Kefka is defeated, but his death means the end of magic forever AND the deaths of every single surviving Esper (if there even are any surviving Espers by that point), and this is all after Kefka ruled the world for a year while destroying cities left and right with a magic laser beam. Not to mention that Shadow is left inside Kefka's tower as it collapses and is never seen again.

Black and Gray Morality: The Returners let Terra choose to join them willingly and show a genuine interest in protecting her, but in the end they also exploit Terra's power and connection to the Espers just like the Empire. Banon even states to her face, on more than one occasion, that she's their trump card that he's pinning their hopes on her.

This is the Hat of everyone in Zozo (except the merchant). Perhaps most notably exhibited by Dadaluma, who says, "Good day, gentle folks. Can I be of service? I hate fighting, so I'd better let you pass" right before attacking the party.

Also Gestahl, at the banquet, when he claims that all he really wants is peace amongst other things.

Blocking Stops All Damage: This is one of the dodge animations in the game: the character is attacked but pulls out their shield, and remains uninjured. There's also a parry animation, and Shadow has a specific animation that averts this: he's injured, but not as much as he would be otherwise (he also has Interceptor counter for massive damage).

Blow You Away: Several enemies can permanently blow the party members away from battle, with Typhon being the most infamous example.

Edgar's Auto Crossbow. He starts out with it, but it'll end most random encounters in one round up until you hit Zozo, at which point it's still effective, just not as much.

The Earrings Relic boosts magic damage by 25%. It so happens that aside from magic, most characters uses magic power to enhance their secondary skills (Phantom Rush, Dance, Lore, Slots). Bound to be one of your most used relics up until the last third of the game when you can hit the damage cap without them.

Boss Bonanza: You have in Kefka's Tower Ultima Buster, Inferno, two of the Eight Dragons, Guardian, the Warring Triad, then the Final Boss.

Boss in Mook Clothing: The invisible Intangir on the Triangle Island of the World of Balance, which is invisible, absorbs every element and has more HP than any enemy in the first half. In the second half, there is the infamous Brachosaur in the World of Ruin, which is usually considered stronger than any boss in the game.

Boss Remix: "Dancing Mad", which mainly uses Kefka's Leitmotif, but it also has parts taken from the opening theme, "Catastrophe" (that plays when you confront Gestahl and Kefka on the Floating Continent), and "The Fierce Battle (Fight to the Death)".

Bowdlerise: As was standard for Nintendo of America at the time, all references to religion and alcohol were censored out of the English SNES version - pubs were changed to cafes, 'holy' was changed to 'pearl' - and some scantily clad female sprites were covered up more. The PS1 English release used the original Woolsey script and contains all dialog censorship, but did not retain the visual censorship, thus reverting the pubs and the nudity. The Enhanced Remake for the GBA release had a new, uncensored script but did retain some censorship to the sprites for nudity. Both the English and Japanese release also censored a scene where guards beat a chained Celes to get a CERO All and E rating, not because of a real life murder as many believe.

Bragging Rights Reward: In the GBA version, by the time you get all the really powerful weapons in the Dragons' Den, your characters are so strong they don't really need them anyway.

But Thou Must: Played with when Terra is given the choice to join the Returners or not. She accompanies the Returners on the trip to Narshe either way, but if she refuses three times then it ends up being she has to for terms of plot, the Empire is headed to their base and she needs an escape as much as they do. The Empire still comes even if she agrees to join, so one way or the other an alliance is inevitablenote The only difference is in the reward you get. Accepting gets you the Gauntlet relic, while refusing at least once gets you a Genji Glove..

Captured Super Entity: The Espers held by the Empire. Ramuh will ask the party to free them. Terra herself might be counted as one.

Celebrity Resemblance: Celes resembles the opera singer Maria. Because of this, she becomes a drop-in replacement for the original singer, as part of a plan to obtain an airship. Setzer noticed the difference only after bringing her aboard.

Censor Steam: Chadarnook's goddess mode. She has a lot less censor steam in the Japanese original and PS1 versions than she does in the SNES and GBA versions.

Central Theme: Love, in all its different forms, and the struggle to keep living and loving in the face of death, destruction and hatred.

Chekhov's Gunman: Celes and General Leo appear in Terra's flashback not 30 minutes into the game. Additionally, Kefka is seen briefly in the opening cutscene.

Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Late in the game, Locke finally finds the legendary Phoenix magicite, which he hopes can revive the long-deceased (but otherwise preserved) Rachel, his girlfriend and his reason for The Dulcinea Effect. Unfortunately, the magicite is so weak that it shatters on use, only providing enough power to revive Rachel for a moment. Just before Rachel dies again, she tells Locke to stop torturing himself for what happened to her and to love Celes as much as he loved her. Oh, and her power fixes the Phoenix magicite so you can use it during gameplay.

Contrived Coincidence: So, Celes happened to look exactly like the renowned opera singer Maria, who was stalked by the man named Setzer who, in turn, owned the world's only (active) airship, which the party needed to get to the South Continent? And, more importantly, she happens to have a world-class operatic soprano with no formal training!

Convection Schmonvection: In the cave that leads to the Sealed Gate. Falling into the lava will only bring the party to the beginning of the cave. Later, in the Phoenix Cave, you'll cross lakes of lava by hopping over tiny stepping stones.

Deathgaze, who will run away after a few turns, which means you'll have to find him all over again.

Kefka, who is engaged in battle no less than three times in the World of Balance — the Imperial Camp near Doma, the decisive battle in Narshe, and just outside the Sealed Gate. He runs away from the first two fights, and is swept away by the escaping Espers in the third.

Crapsack World: The World of Ruin. The distant past of the setting counts as well.

Credits Medley: It uses the leitmotif of each character, regardless of whether you recruited them or not, along with "Final Fantasy", the series main theme.

Crutch Character: Cyan and Edgar, but only his Tools skill. Sabin also warrants a mention, especially as soon as he gets the Rising Phoenix Blitz during the first part of the game.

Curb-Stomp Battle: The out of control Espers do this to the Empire, then later Kefka returns the favour.

Cutscene: Pretty much started the "long Final Fantasy cutscene" trend.

Cutscene Incompetence: Basically, any time after the Narshe Battle Sequence, if the party runs into Kefka, they're gonna get their asses beat like a group of red headed stepchildren. Justified when you encounter Gestahl on the Floating Continent. The first thing he does to you is use the very source of magic in the world to paralyze you.

The boss Wrexsoul can be rather complicated to defeat; you're supposed to kill your own party members until he emerges from hiding, and then attack him. Or, you know, you could just cast Banish, that works just as well (if you don't mind not getting the Item Drop). The latter solution is still viable in the GBA version of the game, suggesting it was either an intended way to finish the boss, or an Ascended Glitch for that encounter (as the Vanish/Doom bug was corrected). Given that Banish worked on the SoulSavers even without the Vanish/Doom bug in the original, the former seems likely.

And, as usual in Final Fantasy, Revive Kills Zombie. The otherwise-challenging boss Phantom Train happens to be undead, so you can throw a Phoenix Down at it and end the fight in one round.

Sure, you can do as the game suggests and deploy your Runic ability on Tunnel Armor...or you can pick up the Thunder Rod found in that same cave and One-Hit Kill it.

Number 024 in the Magitek Research Facility. He uses Barrier Change to absorb every element but one, so he's clearly meant as a test of your brand-new magic skills. However, he doesn't share the same insane physical defense that everything else possesses in that building, so you can assault him with Bushido, Blitz, Tools and good old physical attacks.

Magic Master in the Cultists' Tower uses the same strategy, but due to where you're fighting, you can't use physcial attacks. You can, however, use Berserk and completely bypass his brutal magic spells. He still hits pretty hard, but this is simply remedied by vanishing all of the party members. Also, since he plays by the same rules, just draining his magic to 0 will make him just drop dead, and this even skips hit last-ditch ultimate spell.

Cyborg: Sergeants and Belzecues in the Magitek Factory. In addition to utilizing programs to attack the party in battle, they are weak to Water and Lightning elemental attacks, just like machines, and they have high defenses. They are also stated to have been infused with Magitek, though it's not exactly clear why simple dobermans get the same kind of cybernetic enchantments/replacements and battle programs as the high ranked and heavily armed officers of the Empire.

D - F

Damn You, Muscle Memory: Selecting multiple targets with a spell is done with the shoulder buttons, rather than the left and right arrows on the D-Pad as is usual for the series. Also, the SNES version uses the then-standard rightmost-face-button-to-select, lowest-face-button-to-cancel control scheme, while most ports use the opposite (as became the standard from the PS1 onward) with no option to remap the buttons.

Darker and Edgier: Final Fantasy VI was by far the darkest game in the franchise at the time of its release, and is still a contender for the title today. The storyline is rife with tales of personal loss, the central antagonist has multiple counts of genocide on his hands, and halfway through the game you face The End of the World as We Know It. VI's atmosphere is almost uniformly bleak even prior to becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland; virtually everyone aside from the more upbeat main characters is afraid of the impending war and the Empire is regularly shown to still be in the process of conquering the world through invasion and slaughter. After the apocalypse, most of the party has edged against the Despair Event Horizon and must be swayed back into fighting. This is in stark contrast with its predecessor Final Fantasy V, which is so lighthearted that it often teeters on the edge of being an Affectionate Parody.

Darkest Hour: After the world is rent asunder, the heroes scattered to the winds, and the last remaining player character loses the one person left whom she could consider family (though the last event is up to the player's actions).

Gau: Terra... she okay? Ramuh: Her life is in no danger. She simply used a power she didn't know she had, and it overwhelmed her. Now her body won't listen to what she's telling it to do. As for myself, I am Ramuh—the esper, Ramuh. Gau: Espers... live other world... right?

And so on. Eventually they stop trying to rewrite dialogue for every character, though. There are some segments with dialogue in quotation marks that isn't attributed to any particular character.

Another example is the various character segments during the ending when two characters are paired up for the same segment: Edgar with Sabin, Celes without Locke and even Relm without Strago.

Zozo. Enemies suddenly have enough HP to survive more than one round from you, they begin using magic attacks regularly, and one type of enemy can even use items to heal itself or allies. Another throws weapons at you for a ton of damage.

The Floating Continent: the random encounters are much stronger than you expect (if the party had trouble beating the Air Force boss they fought earlier, they should get off the continent and start grinding), and on top of that, Ultima Weapon can be surprisingly powerful. Further compounding the problem, should you decide to save, you cannot get off unless you get through the entire dungeon! That's right, the cop out is right before Ultima Weapon, so you still have to fight incredibly difficult random encounters and trudge through the entire dungeon just to get off of the freaking island!

The GBA version in general can qualify, if you're used to exploiting some of the better-known Good Bad Bugs of the SNES version.

Edgar. Auto Crossbow will end most enemy encounters instantly until around Zozo, and the Drill can one-shot most regular enemies even after that and does excellent damage to bosses. (The chainsaw does even more damage but has a 1/4 chance of an instant-death effect that misses completely against enemies strong enough that it would otherwise be useful.) Sabin likewise begins with powerful Blitzes and will unlock Rising Phoenix (capable of One Hit Multi Killing entire groups of regular enemies) at about the time Auto Crossbow's usefulness starts to wane.

A Genji Glove, which allows Dual Wielding and effectively doubles physical damage, can be had very early if you know to refuse a But Thou Must at least once before the game forces you to accept it. Especially handy during Locke's scenario, which forces you into several solo battles with a character with no combat-oriented special abilities.

In South Figaro, if you know where to look, you can find two excellent Relics on the first visit; the Gigas Glove which boosts all physical damage, including from special attacks, by 25%, and the Hermes Sandals which cast Haste on the wearer. Oh Edgar, got some new accessories for you to try on!

Gau, if you put effort in getting his Rages. You have easy access to rages that deal 4x physical damage, wipe out entire enemy parties with Wind Slash, can cast Fira, Thundara, Bio or Cura long before you're supposed to have them, and several of the game's more useful Blue Magic Spells. Then there is Quake and Gigavolt, which is equivalent to Thundaga, which you can't learn until the second half! Stray Cat alone will carry you up until the Floating Continent. His Gigavolt attack can kill several bosses in one strike!

Discretion Shot: When Doma is poisoned, Cyan can explore the rest of the castle, where he can find the last of the living soldiers near the barracks door staring at the wall saying "... We are finished". Entering the barracks makes Cyan stop just before entering the room, staying there for the few seconds, close the door, barely move back and say "... Here too."

Disposable Superhero Maker: How the Empire was making its Magitek knights before it became obsolete with the discovery of magicite (of course, you destroying the Magitek Research facility didn't help either).

Does This Remind You of Anything?: Terra's second flashback, where she remembers Emperor Gestahl speaking to a crowd of soldiers clad in all brown about being the "chosen ones" meant to rule the world, while everyone sticks up their right hand in salute... For extra measure, the three generals behind him (Kefka, Leo and Celes) are all blonde.

Driven to Suicide: The survivors of the world's destruction who ended up on Solitary Island. Over the course of a year, they all lost their will to live and threw themselves off a cliff into the rocks below. If Cid dies, Celes herself follows in their footsteps, though she doesn't succeed.

Dummied Out: Bosses like the Kaiser Dragon and Colossus. The former would later appear in the GBA remake as a Bonus Boss.

Dungeon Town: This game, next to Final Fantasy VIII, contains some of the most prominent examples of this trope. You begin the game stepping on Narshe guards with your Powered Armor in the city streets, which culminates with a trip through Narshe's mines. Later on, you are forced to infiltrate an occupied South Figaro as Locke, having to solve some logic puzzles in order to get from the east side of town to the west. Once you pick up Celes, the under works of the town become a traditional combat-oriented dungeon. Sometime afterwards, you have to go to the dangerous and run-down Zozo and deal with armed homeless men and magical prostitutes before dealing with a gang-leader named Dadaluma. And after that, there's Vector, where guards will be eager to boot you out of the upper part of town. In the World of Ruin, Narshe is all but abandoned, and monsters swarm the streets, and Owzer's House is invaded by a haunted painting.

Earn Your Happy Ending: Probably one of the kings of this trope - after all the world ends halfway through the game. Yet by the time the credits roll, most of the main cast has resolved their core conflicts and can move on with their lives (once they've dealt with the problem of the vicious godlike entity that blew up the world in the first place.)

Elemental Powers: Like most of its siblings in the series, this game, too, features elemental powers.

Empty Levels: It is advised not to grind too much until you get the best status-giving Espersnote though that's only if you're min-maxing or trying to optimize your characters; the game is very winnable with a bare minimum of grinding, waiting until you have the best Espers just makes it easier.

Enormous Engine: The engine powering Figaro Castle — while it's small compared to the castle, the characters are dwarfed in comparison (and they even have a boss battle on top of it).

Ensemble Cast: Of all the Final Fantasy games, only Final Fantasy IX comes close to matching VI for lack of a clear protagonist (and that's only for the first two thirds of the game, before Zidane's story becomes the really important arc,and the cast of Final Fantasy V are a pretty even spread in terms of plot importance.) While Terra is the first character you control and is a strong contender for 'main character,' the story isn't driven by her the way, say, Cloud drives Final Fantasy VII. Rather as the game progresses most of the other characters get at least one important sidequest in the World of Ruin when you have to get the party together, Sabin and Locke get major segments in the first part of the game, and in addition to the aforementioned sidequests several characters get a second character-development sidequest afterwards. In fact, when the world is destroyed the focus of the game shifts to Celes, who for the second half of the game has equal claim to the 'main character' title from about the midway point on. This is further illustrated in Terra and Celes' mirrored character arcs and even the spells they learn naturally. You can even choose not to recruit Terra again in the World of Ruin and finish the game without her.

Epic Rocking: "Dancing Mad", a classically-styled piece with four distinct movements, each with their own theme and variation on different Leitmotifs from throughout the game. The full song stretches to about seventeen minutes long (compare to "One-Winged Angel", which reaches less than half of that). The end theme (variously translated as "Reviving Green", "Balance Is Restored", or just "Ending Theme") is even longer, surpassing twenty-one minutes in length with ease. At the time it was, and maybe it still is, the longest track in the series.

Well, usually when you make a song it's two to three minutes in length, you have the introduction, the main part and the ending. But... for 'Dancing Mad' I didn't really put a stop on it, so I kept on working on it, working on it, working on it and that really let the song... you know... I got to play around with it for something like fourteen minutes, and it's really one of my favorites.

Escort Mission: Averting the usual headaches of escorting an NPC, Banon is by and far the best healer in the game and, in fact, one of the best healers in almost any RPG. His free full party heal is powerful enough that it's completely possible to simply weigh or tape down the button to select an action and walk away from the console for a day or two and become max level (the sequence where you escort Banon is a series of fights, it's possible to get into an infinite loop of said fights). You can eventually reach max level, which can overcome any unobtained stat gain for not using Espers.

Eternal Engine: The Magitek Factory and its remains in Kefka's Tower. Figaro Castle also counts, particularly its massive basement which holds the engines themselves.

Even Evil Has Standards: Celes, general of the Empire and responsible for conquering the town of Maranda (and probably South Figaro's occupation), started her Heel-Face Turn when she found out Kefka was planning to poison the people of Doma.

Everybody Laughs Ending: Subverted. First, Celes and Locke get embarrassed over a comment from Relm. Relm and Strago start laughing. Then Terra starts laughing, Celes and Locke start laughing, and soon everyone on the screen is sharing a good laugh... and then Kefka starts laughing and walks into the scene.

Everybody's Dead, Dave: At the start of the game's second act, this is assumed by Cid, since as far as he can see, all that's left of the world is the tiny island the player is on. If Cid ends up dying, too, Celes tries to commit suicide out of the despair of this fact. She is quite shocked when after surviving, she sees a bird bandaged with a bandana that is strikingly similar to one worn by a certain thi—er, treasure hunter. — meaning that, somewhere, people live.

Follow the Plotted Line: Sabin's scenario feels like this, except nobody bothered to tell him that the direct pathway to Nikeah is blocked by the landslide.

For Doom the Bell Tolls: Heard in the opening theme when the opening narration talks about the destructive War of the Magi. This trope later reappears in the first world map music in the World of Ruin and "Dancing Mad," the final boss theme, and is also present in The Empire's theme. The first three also overlap with Ominous Pipe Organ (The Empire's theme opts for brass instruments instead).

Forbidden Fruit: Banon tells a Pandora's Box-like story to Terra. Otherwise, there is no clear example of this trope, unless the magic itself/Warring Triad statues count.

Foreshadowing: When the opening narration says "Yet there now stands one who would reawaken the magic of ages past, and use its dread power as a means by which to conquer all the world," watch the bottom right corner of the screen—you'll catch a brief glimpse of Kefka.

Free-Fall Fight: When riding the waterfall, and later when fighting the Air Force.

The U.S. SNES release had an incredible amount of bugs in it. Relm's Sketch ability missing on the wrong monsters can lead to unpleasant side-effects, the worst of which being deletion of savegames. However, it can also fill your inventory with zillions of copies of the game's best equipment. Also, killing Doom Gaze with Vanish/X-Zone prevents the boss from dropping the Bahamut magicite because the drop is triggered by a counterattack script and X-Zone and similar abilities prevent counterattacks from being triggered. (Note that it is not Lost Forever, since this also causes the game to fail to mark Doom Gaze as defeated, meaning he'll continue to reappear until you beat him the proper way.)

There was also a bug where, in the World of Ruin, the player could re-shift the world back to the World of Balance. This was done by abusing a script during the Opera House event where the player didn't get a game over if they died, they were merely teleported outside. Thus if the player leaves one of the unique rat enemies in the rafters alive until the World of Ruin, then went up, fought them and lost, the script would put them back outside in the World of Balance. Though it does simplify the saving-the-world idea, the player is without an airship and several critical locations no longer exist, including the final dungeon, so the game is pretty much unplayable from then-on.

Gameplay and Story Integration: C'mon, Celes, you've got quadruple-digit HP. Did you really think a little tumble off a cliff was going to do the job?

General Leo and Rachel's deaths are yet another example of this in the series.

In some parts of the game, a single set of dialogue is used for whoever is set as the leader of the party. There's nothing incongruous about most of the characters saying the lines, but in cases like Shadow and Umaro, it can cause Out Of Character Moments.

Gateless Ghetto: Vector. The city looks different from the other towns on the world map, and the PSX cutscenes and game art show that it's a massive industrial town with many interesting looking buildings and machines, but when exploring the actual town, there's only six little buildings, a bunch of metal supports, a few boxes, and a railroad to the Magitek Factory, all surrounded by an unnecessary bottomless pit. The Imperial Palace, however, which is actually rather large, shows a dreary and polluted skyline full of factories and fires.

Gender-Restricted Gear: Gear is generally restricted along rough "class" lines—light armor wearers cannot equip heavy armor, etc.—regardless of gender, but the Minerva armor, one of the best sets in the game, can only be equipped by female heavy armor users.

Genre Shift: The first half of the game (the World of Balance) is almost entirely linear and narrative-based (aside from a few optional sub-quests). The second half (the World of Ruin) is more open-ended and free-roaming, allowing the player's party to access Kefka's Tower as soon as they get the Airship (which isn't a good idea).

Goggles Do Nothing: Quite literally, in the SNES version of the game. The Evade stat was useless due to a glitch, so the Blind status ailment didn't impact the characters in any way (except Strago, who wouldn't learn Lores when Blinded; for everybody else it just made them look like they're wearing Cool Shades), so the Goggles that prevented blindness... you get the idea.

Goggles Do Something Unusual: They will protect from blindness, which is actually useful if it's the newer (or fan-patched) version of the game.

When Doma Castle is poisoned, the last surviving guard can be found at a door. Speaking to him prompts the reply: "We were too late..." Stepping into the next door prompts Cyan to stop, step back, close the door, look away, and mutter, "..Here too."

Gotta Catch Them All: Gau's Rages, Strago's Lores, Mog's Dances, Edgar's Tools, Cyan's Bushido, Sabin's Blitzes, Magicites, and your own party members in the World of Ruin. There's a lot to catch. The fact that some of them (such as one of Strago's Lores, one of Mog's Dances, and some Magicites) are Lost Forever if you don't do stuff right can be painful. The Advance version added a Bestiary, which adds in the challenge of killing at least one of every creature.

Green Rocks: Magicite, literally. They have a bit of red in them, too.

The game never tells you that the Jump command from the Dragoon Boots is more powerful when the Jumper is wielding a spear. Knowing this makes Edgar and Mog much stronger post-Apocalypse. This may be a case of Continuity Nod and You Should Know This Already.

Gau's Rages. Knowing how to use them makes the difference between Gau being a barely useful character and him being a Disc One Nuke.

Happily Failed Suicide: Depending on how things play out, Celes may attempt suicide, but fail... happily, because from where she lies, she sees evidence that one or more of the others may have survived, which gives her the will to live.

Harmless Freezing: The frozen Esper in Narshe. Once unfrozen, it gives up its life willingly after noticing that the world is in the same ruined state it was in when it was frozen. One of the status effects averts this: a frozen character cannot act, and is instantly killed by any physical attack (naturally, you don't get access to that to use on your enemies).

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Occurs at the Imperial Observation Post east of Vector. It's initially full of soldiers that will fight you when approached. Even if you win, you'll still be thrown out. Something similar occurs in the northern part of Vector itself.

Edgar and Sabin flip a coin to determine who will be king of Figaro and who will have the freedom to live the life they want. Edgar "lost", by using a Two-Headed Coin, in order to keep the burden off his brother's shoulders. The SNES translation was somewhat inaccurate on this point:

GBA Edgar: If it's heads, you win. Tails, I win. The winner chooses whichever path he wants... no regrets, no hard feelings.

SNES Edgar: If it's heads, you win. We'll choose whichever path we want, without any regrets.

Humans Are the Real Monsters: The Espers lived in a lush and fertile world in peace and harmony with themselves and their surroundings despite the fact they can use their magic powers for destruction, while the humans drain the power of the Espers into delicious whiffs of magic purely for warfare and personal gain, going as far as to modify their own bodies with a sickening blend of their own technology and their magic extracts of the Espers. The two largest human cities in the game, Zozo and Vector, are portrayed as being dangerous, polluted places.

Improbable Weapon User: Not yet at the level of some later installments in the series, but still, Setzer fights with cards, darts, and dice, Relm uses a paintbrush, Mog dances to inflict status effects, and Umaro just throws your other party members at the monsters.

Infallible Babble: Inverted by the Zozo thieves, who are all pathological liars by nature.

Infinity+1 Sword: All characters get one specifically for them in the Gameboy Advance remake. However, they're yet shamed by the Lightbringer/Illumina from the original release which is still present. +7 to all stats, +50% Evade and Magic Evade, max attack power, when attacking it consumes 20 MP to deal an instant critical hit, its unblockable and ignores row, and randomly casts Holy when attacking. The Gameboy Advance remake made it effectively farmable, as it's obtained by betting the Ragnarok sword (formerly one of a kid) in the Coliseum, and the final boss has a Ragnarok to be stolen and can now be fought over and over.`

Y'know, the World of Ruin would have come as a much bigger surprise had the "esper" menu not been visibly half emptynote the mobile port is far, far worse, with literally half the list of Espers replaced with ????? before the end of the World of Balance. Even worse in the original U.S. release, where the map of the World of Ruin included spoiled the game once the box was opened.

The map even gives away that the final boss is named Kefka (why else would he have not one, but two towers named after him, one of which is the final destination of the game?).

The same menu lists the commands Blitz, Bushido, Rage, Dance and Lore, so you know sooner or later someone with said skill will join up.

It is made clear early on that magic was incredibly rare in the setting, implying that few aside Terra and Celes could hope to use it. But every character has a missing space for it in the command list. Inverted with Terra, who has the magic command but the slot where her unique ability should go is empty.

Early in the game, you control eleven Moogles to fight to protect Terra. Most of them are low level with no ability, and you can't change their equipment. But one of them, Mog, is at a much higher level, he has the ability Dance, and you can unequip him freely. Guess who joins the party later on?

This one is especially subtle, to be fair, as it directly violates the rule below. Mog is already named, even though you're given the option to change it when he officially joins up.

If a character has a name before you meet them, they will not join your party. Thus you know when you meet General Leo that he will not be a permanent character. Same goes for Banon. It's averted with one of the Optional Party Members, (Umaro), whom you must fight as a boss before he will join you.

Interspecies Adoption: In the World of Ruin, Terra adopts all the kids in Mobliz after the town was destroyed by Kekfa's Light of Judgement. The kids don't know she's half-esper, which is a major source of inner conflict for her. Later on when she reveals who she is, they still accept her as their mother. The strength of her love for the children resolves her character conflict over her own half-human nature and eventually allows her to continue to exist after all magic disappears.

Interspecies Romance: Besides Terra's parents, there is also an example during the War of the Magi between Esper Odin and a human Queen.

Involuntary Group Split: Happens to Sabin on the raft early on in the game, and then the entire party when their airship literally splits in half at the climactic midpoint.

It's All Upstairs from Here: The Cultists' Tower. Inverted by Kefka's Tower, in which you start at the top and go deeper into the center.

It's Personal: Half of the party was in one way or another screwed over by the Empire and/or Kefka: Terra and Celes were tools of the Empire from birth, Locke's girlfriend was put into a coma after an Imperial attack, Cyan had everything he loved annihilated, Edgar's castle was attacked, and it is implied they killed his father, (which also covers Sabin), and Shadow was used and discarded on the Floating Continent.

It's Up to You: While the story tends to focus more on Terra, Celes, & Locke, there is no single main character. A lot of the FMVs in the PS1 port focus on Celes... but by the time of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Terra is considered the main character as she is the game's representative in the cast. Kitase has stated in an interview that he "wanted to create many characters that could all stand up to be main characters".

The generally-accepted reasons for this are that a) Terra is the first party member, around whom the plot of the first half of the game revolves, and b) she has more parallels with Kefka than anyone else except arguably Celes.

Kappa: The result of Baleful Polymorph, translated as "Imp" in the English scripts. However, in the GBA release, the exclusive Kappa Gear is more obviously themed to them, including a cloak made of reeds and a saucer as a helmet.

The unnamed aristocrat in South Figaro who sold his town out to the Empire, never recieves any comeuppance for doing so. (Though he does have a My God, What Have I Done? moment while the town is occupied.)

Killed Off for Real: Leo and, depending on the player's actions, Shadow and/or Cid. (Cid is something of a Luck-Based Mission; if no fish show up at the beach, or none of the right fish, it counts against you.)

The Kingdom: Figaro and Doma. Tzen was one until it was sacked by The Empire, which assassinated its royal family.

Gau, Relm, and Mog are among the most hideously underrated and overlooked characters in the series, even though all three of them can be utterly devastating when raised properly, and they all have access to some of the game's best armor and weapons. Using such equipment, Gau and Mog can easily max out their defense, and Relm has the highest magic stat in the game. Yes, even more than the half-esper Terra!

This is especially true of Gau. For those who are too lazy to build his list of Rages, he'll be very weak compared to everyone else, but if you take some time to get some of the better Rages, Gau becomes an extremely powerful character with a Rage for every situation, giving him access to very powerful magic that doesn't cost a single mp and various immunities and automatic statuses, with the only downside being that he becomes uncontrollable once a Rage is chosen and can't change it. And then there's Wind God Gau; give him a Merit Award and an Offering and Cyan's Tempest weapon and use Stray Cat, and you have a 50% chance to deal four incredibly massive hits that damage everything on screen, making Gau by far the strongest character.

Let's Split Up, Gang: In the Phoenix Cave and Kefka's Tower, you are forced to form two and three teams, respectively. The game makes you do this whether you want it or not early on, when Locke goes off to stymie the Empire and then Sabin attempts to beat Ultros down... in the water...The mechanic for choosing multiple parties is first introduced in the battle for the defense of the Narshe Esper, though in that case, everyone is still working together on the same map.

Lightning Bruiser: A veritable legion, as due to bugs in the gamenote Most of which were fixed in later versions, half the characters have the ability to become invincible to attacks, run like the wind, and hit in the tens of thousands every round.

Limit Break: In the form of Desperation Attacks and occurring entirely "under the hood;" you certainly didn't get a chance to choose them, and they're so rare that most people have only seen them during a Tool-Assisted Speed Run of the game.note It's a 1/20 chance of occurring when you select the Fight command when near death. However, they get an honorary mention because they were expanded into the mechanic we all know and love during the development of the Trope Namer, Final Fantasy VII.

Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Zig-zagged. Magic is almost always more powerful than physical attacks, but most of the characters also have a specialized skillset (like Tools or Blitz) that develops throughout the course of the game, and usually doesn't lag too far behind magic (and most of them don't cost MP either). But by the endgame, you get weapons like the Fixed Dice or Valiant Knife that deal obscene amounts of damage and ignore defense and evasion, and can be coupled with relics that attack multiple times. At the end, you get magic like Ultima (which does the most damage in the game) and Quick (which lets you perform a few free actions), which is not matched by anything else, at which point the major limiting factor becomes MP costs, which natural abilities and attacks do not have.

If you don't save Shadow on the Floating Continent, he's gone from the game for goodnote Which is a bit of a Guide Dang It, as saving him requires waiting until literally the last few seconds before the Floating Continent collapses, with no indication before, during, or after that this is what you have to do unless you decline to leave the first time: the menu option to not run away then becomes "Gotta wait for Shadow" instead of just "Wait!". There are also some weapons and armor that can vanish from the game if you don't get them when they're first available.

If you leave some chests un-opened that can be opened later, their contents will be upgraded. (The Figaro cave is a nice example.)

The GBA version has a bestiary. For 100% completion, once you enter the World of Ruin, pretty much the only time you'll ever meet any of the monsters from the World of Balance again is on the Veldt and even then, you will only encounter the ones you encountered in the World of Balance itself.

The Cyan's Nightmare sequence purges all fear and doubt from Cyan's mind and provides closure with his departed wife and son, unlocking all of his SwordTech techniques.

The player can take Strago to hunt the legendary monster Hidon and avenge his old friend who has been (seemingly) mortally injured by the beast. The fight also gives him the opportunity to learn the Blue Magic "Grand Train," which is on par with Ultima as one of the game's most powerful magic attacks.

Shadow is a strictly temporary (and usually optional) party member throughout the World of Balance. By making sure he safely escapes the Floating Continent, rescuing him from the Cave on the Veldt, and tracking him down at the Dragon's Neck Coliseum, you can gain his loyalty for the rest of the game and also find out some of his backstory via Dream Sequence.

Helping Terra free the town of Mobliz from the demon Phunbaba in the World of Ruin frees her from protecting the town and allows her to dedicate herself to the party full-time... and also resolves her confusion over her ability to love and shows her what she's fighting for, doubling the duration of her Morph ability.

Betting at the Coliseum due to the A.I. Roulette the game imposes on you. You can score some rare and unique items if you wager one of equal worth, but you are forced to use only one party member and the AI controls them. Because your party members are under A.I. Roulette control, they can either win battles effortlessly or waste turns casting spells on themselves that have absolutely zero effect, such as casting Esuna when the character isn't under any status ailments. Characters like Mog and Gau are horrible to use for colosseum battles due to how their Dance and Rage moves makes them be stuck with a set of certain list of moves and can't change out of it.

Also, the fishing mission at the beginning of the World of Ruin. You can only succeed by catching Yummy Fish, because these are the only ones that improve Cid's health. His health continuously depletes, the other fish are neutral or harmful to him, and the yummy fish don't spawn every time Celes goes back to the shore. Fortunately, if you fail there is no gameplay consequence. There is, however, a different cutscene.

The Cursed Shield nerfs all your stats and inflicts every status ailment in the book on you... but, if you survive 256 battles with it equipped, it transforms into the Paladin Shield, the best shield in the game.

The Ultima Weapon is found about a third of the way through the game. However, its power depends on the maximum HP of the user, so it doesn't start dealing the damage you'd expect from the Ultima Weapon until around the end of the game.

Gau starts out with a half-dozen mediocre Rages, and that's all he'll ever get if you don't go out of your way to develop him. If you know which Rages to shoot for, though, a little bit of grinding on the Veldt will make him a Game Breaker throughout the World of Balance and much of the World of Ruin. He only really gets definitively surpassed in the endgame, when 90% of your team reaches Game Breaker status.

Mana Burn: Rasp. Unlike other games in the series without a specific mana burn spell, Rasp is notably useful because some enemies are made up of pure magic: reducing them to zero MP kills them just as effectively as reducing them to zero HP. For some enemies, this also prevents them from using a last ditch move that may kill your party.

The Man Behind the Man: Averted: Kefka and Emperor Gestahl both make an appearance in Terra's flashback at the beginning of the game. Kefka also makes a blink-and-miss-it appearance when you see Vector for the first time in the opening cutscene, making him the first main character you see.

Meaningful Echo: Celes's Tear Jerker moment almost exactly mirrors the movements she goes through during the opera scene. The part where she throws the flowers from the balcony takes on a whole new meaning once you compare it to her throwing herself from the high cliff.

Metal Slime: The Solitary Island upon which Celes awakens after the destruction of the World of Balance is covered in Peepers and Land Rays, from which Locke can steal Elixirs and Megalixirs, respectively. Unfortunately, they only have 1 HP and the Sap status, so they self-destruct almost as soon as you start fighting them. They also have two of the best defensive Blue Magic spells for Strago to learn - getting them to use said spells before they die on their own is nigh impossible.

During the journey to Thamasa, Terra converses with Leo and Shadow about love and her ability to feel which is followed immediately by Locke having a good puke into the sea.

The party finds the missing Espers, but they advance on the party ready to attack. As the party prepares to defend themselves, their leader arrives. Terra confronts him and magic sparks between them, terrifying Strago. It's a very tense, uncertain scene... promptly ruined by Locke reacting to Terra's power fluctuations with "I wonder if she's gonna go ballistic again!"

The party convinces the Espers to talk peace with the Empire, everyone is safe and sound, Locke and Celes reconcile and seem poised to explore their feelings for each other, and their awkwardness gives everyone a good laugh. Then Kefka shows up and the next twenty minutes shows that the game is on track to make sure everything is terrible forever.

Mugged for Disguise: Locke's story path dumps him in South Figaro. The only way to traverse the city, which is under military occupation, is to "Mug" merchants and low-ranking troops for their threads.

Multi-Mook Melee: The falling battle against the Air Force. In the GBA version, The Soul Shrine.

Multiple Endings: The general scenario doesn't change, but several characters' endings change slightly depending on whether you found certain other characters. For instance, Celes's ending changes if you don't find Locke, and Relm's ending changes if you don't find Strago.

Musicalis Interruptus: Ultros tries to do this by dropping a 4-ton weight onto the stage. If you manage to stop him, he and your party both end up falling from the rafters, landing on and knocking out several important actors in the process.

Choosing between Ragnarok magicite or the sword made out of it in the SNES version. You can steal the Ragnarok weapon from one of the final bosses, but in the SNES version you can't save after beating the game, so you can't keep it or upgrade it to Illumina / Lightbringer. In the GBA version, you can save and continue after beating the final boss, so it's possible to get both (as well as multiple copies of Lightbringer, if you so choose.)

According to the Esper legend, the Warring Triad experienced a brief moment of clarity when they realized the horror they had brought upon the land, leading to their decision to seal themselves, and their magic, away from the world.

When the party tracks down the Espers that stormed out of the Sealed Gate and razed Vector, they are deeply in regret over what they did, having lost control of themselves, and harming innocents along with the Imperials. When they're informed that the Empire wants to talk peace, their first response is actually "They would forgive us?"

My Name Is ???: The "passenger" ghosts of the Phantom Train if one of them joins you. Also Terra during her first trip to Narshe under Biggs' and Wedge's command (she's amnesiac, after all).

Mythology Gag: This game's Cid is the only Cid from the numbered series (or at least from the Sakaguchi-produced ones) who does not have any connection, even a tenuous one, with airships. But there's a scene (that you have to get out of your way to watch) in which Cid is conversing with Setzer about his airship and even suggesting some modifications (which Setzer disregards).

A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Gestahlian Empire is essentially the game's equivalent of Nazi Germany: Ruthlessly conquering various countries, the various soldiers wearing mostly brown, their doing a Nazi Salute at one point, experimenting on and killing off an entire race, and plans for two Magitek Knights to breed to produce a superior human (who uncoincidentally has blonde hair and possibly blue eyes, and is enhanced).

It also has many similarities to The British Empire, such as its Victorian-inspired Steampunk technology, and as mentioned earlier, its ruthless conquering of other countries and wiping out of another race.

Due to Nintendo's censorship policies. This limitation initially provides an atmosphere that suggests we won't be seeing too many on-screen deaths. This does not hold true later in the game. Even when Cid mentions how the other survivors left in Solitary Island committed suicide, he "softens" the blow by saying they took leaps of faith off the cliff, which "perked 'em right up!" — even though it's extremely clear what happened to them, it could be taken as a sarcastic, Black Comedy line.

There is one exception: after Kefka gives Celes a sword on the Floating Continent, he tells her, "Kill the others and we'll forgive your treachery! Take this sword! Kill them all!"'

Guardian in the World of Balance. Also Typhon in the Coliseum, and even if you domanage to kill him, all you get is a paltry Elixir. If you can kill Typhon, you don't need Elixirs anymore.

The Intangir is also nigh-invulnerable; it's immune to almost everything you can throw at it. note Except Stop.

The Magic Master isn't technically invincible, but between your handicaps and his extreme speed, powerful spells, randomly shifting defenses, top-tier HP, unsurpassed MP and a brutal final attack, you're not likely to notice unless and until you bone up on the handful of unorthodox strategies designed especially for fighting him.

Averted with Figaro Castle's merchants, who don't feel comfortable charging Edgar or Sabin and want to give them items for free. Sabin and Edgar insist on paying since the guys have to support themselves, but Edgar still gets a nice 50% discount.

Justified in the World of Ruin: sure, item prices skyrocket, but the world has gone to hell and the cities need that cash to rebuild themselves.

No Name Given: Unless you look in the manual, you won't know the surnames of the characters until the credits roll.

No One Gets Left Behind: Can be played straight or averted, depending on the player's actions on the Floating Continent: if you don't wait for a certain character to catch up, you will never see him again.

Not Completely Useless: Rasp and Osmose. They serve as an alternate means to kill some bosses by damaging or draining MP. Osmose may also recover MP from enemies, allowing you to continue magical attacks over an extended period of time.

Osmose is actually effective enough in this game that it makes MP almost meaningless. You can just spam Ultima and then cast Osmose when you run out and you're basically guaranteed to get more.

Sketch is not usually useful except for the one time it's used to shame Ultros. Against Cactuars, though, it's one way to deal damage that won't get evaded, since they're vulnerable to their own 1,000 Needles attack. Who needs a Sniper Eye? Not Relm!

Not Drawn to Scale: Compared to the previous installments, FF6 has a very small world with few locales.

Not the Intended Use: Vanish, which makes you immune to physical attacks at the expense of guaranteeing to be hit by any magic attack. This leads to the infamous Vanish+Doom combo, which (due to a presumed bug) even ignores Contractual Boss Immunity.

Olive Garden: The look and feel of Renaissance Italy is sprinkled through much of the game, and most so in South Figaro.

Magic is the most important stat, as end-game spells easily outstrip the most powerful weapons, Tools, or Bushido, Sabin's Blitzes mostly base their power on magic. The fact that a relic that reduces MP costs for all spells exists just makes it more apparent.

The only exceptions to this rule would be characters that can deal multiple hits with physical attacks, such as Dragoon Edgar/Mog or dual-wielding Locke, but it still requires two Relic slots (Dragoon Boots/Dragon Horn and Genji Glove/Master's Scroll) to make the Attack command useful, and only very, very late in the game. By the time dual wielding Locke becomes viable, you're probably so overpowered it's almost not funny.

There's also Magic Evasion in the SNES version. Due to a bug, the Physical Evade stat is worthless and instead Magic Evasion determines your ability to dodge both physical and magical attacks. The right loadout to max out Magic Evasion can render a character almost invincible. The aforementioned bug was fixed in the GBA version, however.

One Year Retirement: Almost all of the party after the World Sundering. Some were more actively trying to strengthen themselves or get the group back together, others were more passive.

Opening the Sandbox: Late in the World of Balance and after gaining the second airship in the World of Ruin.

Opera: The famous Opera scene. Some say that the game itself is opera-like but without the singing.

Optional Character Scene: Inevitable with so many characters and the ability to put whomever you want in your party most of the time.

Optional Party Member: Gogo and Umaro are only recruitable in the World of Ruin. Mog and Shadow only have short story appearances and can be missed as party members by the player's choices. Everyone except Celes, Edgar and Setzer are technically optional in the World of Ruin (though trying to make it through The Very Definitely Final Dungeon with them split up all by themselves is Self-Imposed Challenge of hardcore nature).

Our Zombies Are Different: The only undead enemies that have a real humanoid appearance are the "Still Goings" or the "Living Dead", and they are simply recolors of the Narshe guards. The rest of the undead enemies look far more skeletal or ghost-like in appearance. In addition, zombie-type enemies are functionally immune to instant death: anything that would kill them instantly instead causes them to regenerate with full HP.

The Magic Master at the top of the Cultists' Tower is capable of casting some nasty, nasty spells. The safest way to take him down is to Berserk him (he's actually susceptible and a bit of a wimp), Vanish your entire party (making even his ineffectual physical attack useless) and Rasp/Osmose him to death (he can die if he runs out of MP, and this also denies his last-gasp Ultima, which is really freakin' powerful).

This works admirably well on the Ultima Weapon, as well, as opposed to the standard "beat him down, let him heal, beat him down again" tactic. Of course, anything claiming to be pure energy is asking for it.

Part of what makes The Magic Master difficult to defeat is that he keep changing his elemental resistance in a place that prevent you from using normal attacks. Some obvious tactics to get around it are to berserk your characters to get around the normal attack restriction or spam Non-Elemental magic. A less obvious one is to throw a bunch of Super Balls at him until he die.

Overly Long Fighting Animation: While definitively nowhere as long as in the later games, the attacks are noticeably longer than in the earlier ones. This can be exploited to get around Cyan's Crutch Character status (since his special moves require a long time to charge up).

Person of Mass Destruction: The Espers, as explicitly stated by the game. Since Terra is a human/Esper hybrid, the Empire considers her this as well, as evidenced by her vaporizing several squadrons in seconds. In gameplay terms, she's also the only character who can learn Ultima naturally, not to mention she arguably has the best equipment list, stats, and Special Command in the game.

Phlebotinum Rebel: The Returners refuse to use Magitek, considering it an overly destructive force that can't possibly end well. After several attempts to stop the Empire fail, however, they go right to the source and arm themselves with magic instead. This ends badly, when Gestahl learns how much more powerful magic is than Magitek, and how to exploit it.

Strago is the standard Final Fantasy Blue Mage, who learns Lore abilities by seeing enemies use them.

Gau learns "Rage" monster abilities by "Leap"ing onto monster groups and spending time living with them.

Gogo, being a Final Fantasy Mime, uses the abilities of the other characters in your party. His/Her/Its Mimic command duplicates the last move a party member used, and his in-battle command list can be customized in the status screen.

The Power of Love: The Memento Ring, described as being powered by love from Relm's late mother, prevents instant-death moves from working on the two characters who can equip it. The fact that only Relm and Shadow can equip the ring is one of the many clues provided as the identity of Relm's father.

Powered Armor: Magitek armor straddles the line between this and Mini-Mecha. Exact size and appearance are hard to determine because it has two dramatically different concepts: one in box art and the PSX re-release cinematic, which is akin to a bipedal mechanical dragon that one straddles like a motorbike, another in the in-game small character and detailed enemy sprites, which is far more resembling a conventional Mini-Mecha with a cockpit. In addition to conventional weaponry such as missiles, it may unleash powerful elemental attacks. It's not restricted to mooks either: the player party uses it at three separate occasions. However, it never occurs to them to hijack a suit for permanent use, probably because of the drawback mentioned below...

Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Magitek Armor uses drained essence of living Espers to power itself. It is also used to infuse the Empire's Magitek Knights and grant them magic power. Later we get access to magicite, the crystallized remains of dead Espers, which is even more powerful. Notably, the players use these as well in order to learn magic - apparently it's fine as long as they do it in the name of stopping the Esper killers. Some espers even sacrifice their lives to bestow the magicite.

Every party member except Gogo and Umaro could be equipped with Magicite. Gogo takes it a step further - he/she/it can equip almost every ability in the game, up to three to be used in battle. If Magic is equipped, Gogo can use any spell usable by the other active party members.

Taken literally with some of the enemies in the Magitek Research Facility. Several of them (either machines or implied to be cybernetic) attack with special abilities called "Program __".

Power Up Let Down: So you puzzled out the Zozo Side Quest (or consulted a guide), and now you've got Edgar's Chainsaw, which does even more single-target damage than the Drill and has a 1/4 chance of causing instant death. Awesome, right? Not so fast. Against mooks, the damage difference between the Drill and Chainsaw is academic, since either one does enough damage for a One-Hit Kill. Against bosses, with their Contractual Boss Immunity to instant death effects the Chainsaw actually has a 1/4 chance to miss altogether, meaning that on average the Drill still does more damage. Run the numbers, you know this to be truenote In the mobile version and the GBA version, the chainsaw's instant death attack comes up far less than in previous versions, making it more useful.

Precursors: The Warring Triad and the Espers fit the description, even though they are not exactly this.

Press X To Not Butcher The Opera: During the opera scene, the game prompts you to pick the next line in the lyrics out of a choice of two. If you're too slow, the game picks whatever your cursor is hovering over.

Putting on the Reich: The Gestahlian Empire bears several similarities to Nazi Germany, including unethical experimentation on an intelligent species, genocide, most of the footsoldiers' uniforms being brown, an honest-to-God Nazi salute in one scene, constant displaying of their symbols, and technology advanced enough to allow themselves to start conquering various kingdoms. Not to mention that "Gestahl" sounds a little too similar to "Gestapo". On the other hand, the imperialism, mass murder and the advanced technology in comparison to the neighbours could also be taken as references to Axis Japan or The British Empire. It is an Empire, after all.

Puzzle Boss: There are a remarkable number of bosses, and several Mooks, rather vulnerable to the seemingly-useless Rasp spell. Not surprisingly, people who miss the hint given in-game about this tend to find them That One Boss. Additionally, the method to defeat Wrexsoul is fairly obscure. Unless you Banish the Soul Savers. But that's admittedly very cheap.

Real Is Brown: The colour scheme used in most of the parts of the World of Ruin.

Reduced Mana Cost: The cost-halving Gold Hairpins as usual, and the 1-mp-cost-Ultima-Spam Celestriad.

Religion of Evil: The cult of Kefka. Despite the fact he rules the world at that point, the cultists really don't do much harm at all, and it's not for certain if the enemies on the Cultists' Tower are cultists themselves. It's also hinted that the cult of Kefka only serves Kefka out of fear of being killed if they don't, or in the case of Strago, being too broken by loss of your loved ones to resist. It's not even clear whether Kefka knows (or cares) that they exist.

This property is actually glitched in the game, leading to ghosts that somewhat hilariously kill themselves a little each turn from what was supposed to be the undead equivalent of Regen. Djibriel of Gamefaqs put it best: Instead, due to a bug, Whispers just waste away in their own misery.

Roof Hopping: Or Traintop hopping. In Zozo, you are forced to jump from holes in the sides of buildings.

S - U

Sad Battle Music: In one of the battles vs. Ultros, when Relm joins the party, the standard battle themenote this particular fight uses the traditional FF 6 battle music. The first and last fights with Ultros, on the other hand, use the normal boss battle theme, while the fight at the opera house uses a wholly original theme is replaced by her theme.

Safety in Indifference: Shadow implies that this is his philosophy when he warns Terra that some people kill their own emotions. Probably because of his guilt over being unable to give his old friend and partner a Mercy Kill.

Save The World Climax: Starts off with a mysterious girl named Terra working for the Empire due to a form of mind control. She has no knowledge of who or what she is. When she gets knocked out in a mission, a treasure hunter named Locke quickly helps protect her. Before long she's helping The Resistance fighting against The Empire. The Empire itself poses a threat to the world, but the emperor himself would never go so far as to destroy it, which his seemingly comic-relief jester Kefka goes ahead and does just that. The world now in ruins, the heroes know that they at least have to stop Kefka from destroying all existence since he'd already gone that far.

Scary Black Man: Vargas and Dadaluma. Both are skilled in martial arts and bare-fist fighting, and they both also try to kill the party members for no reason whatsoever, though they are still relatively easy to defeat. Vargas may just be tanned, though, since his parents are both light-skinned.

Scenery Gorn: Vector. In the lower part of the city, the streets are dark and are surrounded by a black pit, there's unfinished and abandoned scaffolding everywhere, Imperial Troops are all around, and the stores and services are mediocre, and it all gets worse when the city gets set on fire. The Magitek Research Facility starts out in a pit full of rotting esper corpses, and the Imperial Palace has a view of what Vector really looks like - An industrial hellhole with a firey orange sky set over a brown cityscape.

Schizo Tech: There is a mechanical castle capable of traveling underground, The Empire has a monopoly in Magitek and Steam Punk mechs (and, apparently, flying robot satellites), and magic is considered a myth by most of the world before the game begins. Yet not only are firearms an extreme rarity, but apparently only one man in the world has figured out how to use a crossbow, and the rest of the world is functionally stuck in the Middle Ages with a Victorian skin. Also, Siegfried is the only person seen with a revolver, and he doesn't even use it until the Coliseum. It's also debatable whether or not Edgar is the only one capable of using crossbows and so on. You don't get much chance to see Figaro in action, and the only other countries in the world are the Empire (with its mecha that fire laser beams and missiles) and the various medieval-level countries. Which probably explains why the Empire takes them over so easily.

Schizophrenic Difficulty: This game has a number of factors (i.e. mostly bugs) which can easily combine into a "it was easy then hard then stupidly simple then WTF I CAN'T WIN NO MATTER WHAT".

The battle speed bug, which makes the battle speed as selected in the config menu only apply to ENEMIES. Those who know of this can turn this "bug" into a difficulty adjuster, but those who don't may wonder why they're getting curbstomped now just because they wanted battles to go a bit faster.

Even without the aforementioned bugs, there are still several difficulty spikes that can make the player wonder how much time the dev team really bothered to put into gameplay balance. The game is in fact quite easy... until you reach Zozo, when the Veil Dancers can kill off your party with a single high-level Ice spell and the huge guys can also do so with a high-level earth spell (Magnitude 8) if you don't run as fast as you can. Then you beat that town (mostly by running like a little bitch), and go along quite nicely until you have to airdrop onto the Floating Continent, at which point the IAF liquidates your party into a fine soup-like consistency... after you have spent 20 non-saveable minutes fighting their grunts, of course.

Schmuck Bait: Crusader is the ultimate Magicite sealed by the Eight Dragons. We have to summon it to see what it does! Ow, it hit us just as hard as it did the enemies. That's one Esper who won't see the light of day again!

Schmuck Banquet: Averted — the Phantom Train inexplicably has a dining car with Ghosts who serve you food, and Cyan is skeptical of it being safe. Sabin wolfs it down, and it turns out it's perfectly fine, and even heals you.

The fight with Vargas in the beginning is a one-on-one battle. The only commands available to Sabin are Attack and Blitz, and you don't know how to use Blitz until a conversation when the battle's almost over, after which you defeat Vargas by using Raging Fistnote It is theoretically possible to defeat Vargas in a straight HP battle, but he has 11,500 HP at a time when you're barely doing damage in the triple digits. Because Sabin's appearance is scripted and he's immediately hit with Doom Fist, limiting the time you have available to finish the battle before automatic defeat, it's nigh-impossible to do.

The battle with Kefka in the Imperial Base might as well be: the only thing he does is attack, and as soon as he's hit with any damage, he runs away.

The third battle with Ultros is a normal boss fight until Relm shows up, and then, after a conversation, you win the battle by having Relm use her Sketch ability to paint a picture of the boss. Though you can kill him the usual way as well.

The first random encounters you come across in the World of Ruin have Sap (which causes damage over time) and very low HP, so they tend to immediately die off on their own; this illustrates the bleak state of the new world.

Feeling like reallygiving yourself a hard time? It's possible to completely skip rescuing Celes in South Figaro with Locke. If you do so, she's replaced in the party by one of the Moogles who fought with Locke and Mog, which presents several problems. Said Moogle can never change its equipment or equip Espers, and eventually what equipment it has is taken away.

A fun little glitch lets you obtain the airship at any point during the World of Balance. This thread shows off the glitch and more. One of the upsides of this glitch is that the long-standing Urban Legend of Zelda about reviving General Leo actually becomes possible (albeit not for the entire game and with some conditions attached).

Sequential Boss: Not only do you fight Kefka's tiers in succession, but if he kills your characters they will also be replaced in succession.

In the very beginning of the game, the dialogue writing makes it look like Terra is going to be Locke's love interest, but then he meets Celes and basically forgets all about his vow to always protect Terra until she actually gets into serious trouble.

Terra also gets Ship Tease later with both General Leo and Shadow in the span of about thirty seconds of gameplay. Of course this is almost immediately followed by one of the ultimate Player Punches in game history when Leo gets killed later in the mission, and Shadow's apparent suicide in the ending makes the latter moot as well.

Shoot the Dangerous Minion: Subverted by Emperor Gestahl: let's just say that trying to kill Kefka on a Floating Continent miles above the surface is a BAD idea, escpecially when Kefka is wielding the power of three gods combined.

Star Wars ones all around: Biggs and Wedge. "Aren't you a little short for a soldier?" And, Kefka throwing Gestahl much like Darth Vader does to Palpatine, although unlike Vader, Kefka's action only serves to shove him even further beyond the Moral Event Horizon.

Also to opera, especially Wagner: Siegfried is a mini-boss in the early game, and Bruin is a bear enemy (in the opera Siegfried, Bruin is his pet bear). Edgar's castle is in Figaro (as in the Marriage of Figaro).

Sole Entertainment Option: The player has to lead Celes through an opera in order to entice Setzer and his Airship to where the party is. This really is the only form of entertainment, other than the Coliseum, that the world will experience.

Largely averted. All the characters who are technically 'guest' characters (Banon, General Leo) have locked equipment sets, meaning you can't give them anything of any import. Terra is even kind enough to shed all her armor and relics before having a Heroic BSOD and flying to Zozo for a nap.

Played straight, albeit temporarily, with Shadow in the World of Balance. Anything you equip him with stays equipped until the next time you get to use him, which can be very annoying considering that he has a random chance of bailing on the party at the end of every battle the first two times you get him, so it's entirely possible for him to tie up rare and powerful equipment like a Ribbon or Genji Glove for long stretches of the game. Hey, jerk, I agreed to pay you 3,000 GP, not a Hero Ring!note Once you gain access to the airship (after the Magitek Research Facility), you can strip any equipment and relics off Shadow, but not (in the SNES version) any magicite. Later versions correct this by allowing you to strip magicite from any character at any time.

Justified when going from Kohlingen and Jidoor to the southern continent, as it makes sense the Empire will have access to stronger equipment... then you find even better stuff at Thamasa. Played straight at the beginning of the World of Ruin and abandoned by the time of Kohlingen, as you reacquire the airship shortly after and thus the shops of the world sell all sorts of varying equipment with no logic or reason one way or the other.

It also happens with with the Magicite you acquire — in general, if an Esper acquired in the World of Balance teaches a spell at a learn rate of 1 or 2 percent, odds are in the World of Ruin a new Esper will teach the spell at a much faster rate. Two of your best Espers in the first part of the game will be Seraph, who teaches the five elementary healing spells quite quickly, and Maduin, who teaches the level two Fire, Ice, Lightning spellsnote although Ifrit and Shiva both teach Fire 2/Fira and Ice 2/Blizzara faster than Maduin. In the World of Ruin, Lakshmi and Phoenix teach all the spells Seraph teaches but do it faster and with a few new spells as well, and Valigarmanda teaches the level three Fire, Ice, Lightning spellsnote Though at the slowest possible rate. The only Espers of the World of Balance who don't become completely outclassed by another Esper later are ones that don't teach anything much worth learning in the first place, like Phantomnote though Vanish and Berserk both have situational uses or Catoblepasnote though Bio is an excellent mid-tier damage spell that ignores most standard elemental defenses.

Source Music: All of the music during the Opera scene, up to and including the battle theme with Ultros, are provided by the in-game orchestra.

Impressario: May as well make the best of this. MUSIC!

Speaking Simlish: The Opera House scene, with both the generic performers and Celes doing it.

Numerous examples due to a combination of official Japanese romanizations and two different English translations. Exmaples include Nalsh vs. Narche vs. Narshe, Lock vs. Locke, Mt. Coltz vs. Mt. Koltz vs. Mt. Kolts, Cefka vs. Kefka, Cayenne vs. Cyan, Bannan vs. Banon, Stragus vs. Strago, Orthros vs. Ultros, and Typhon vs. Chupon. A guard in Figaro Castle in the World of Ruin even lampshades this by mentioning how some of the members of the Cult of Kefka insist on spelling his name with a C instead of a K.

Darill/Daryl is notable for being inconsistent even within the same version of the game: the SNES version uses "Daryl" most of the time, but when you enter her tomb, the in-game message says "Darill's Tomb".

Spoiled Brat: A kid at the auction house in Jidoor will scream at his father when certain items come up for bid, who will then bid an obscene amount of money and win the item for him no matter how much you were willing to bid on it. Even if you actually have enough cash to outbid him, the game won't give you the option.

Spooky Painting: Owzer's Mansion is full of these. One of them attempts to eat your head party member, and the end boss of this sidequest is the queen mother of these.

Squishy Wizard: Terra, Celes and eventually almost everyone else avert this with the ability to equip heavy armor and weapons except for Relm and Strago, who play this trope straight for most of the game.

Static Role, Exchangeable Character: After Terra's reinclusion to the party, the players can arrange the fourteen-member party however they like, barring one or two places where a certain character is fixed for plot purposes. The character in the "party leader" slot is assigned the same lines regardless of who's placed there, which can result in some wildly out-of-character dialogue.

Steam Punk: Has elements of this, most notably in Narshe, Figaro Castle, and Vector. Jidoor and the Opera House also both have Victorian era themes.

A Storm Is Coming: The opening cinematic even has a thunderstorm foreshadowing how the first act does not end well.

Straight for the Commander: This is a tactic in several battles, notably any battle involving switching between multiple parties to prevent an enemy advance and Cyan's defense of Doma Castle.

Stripperiffic: The original siren summon was a woman wearing a gray tank top and no bottoms. In the North American release, she's wearing a pair of hot pants; which are clearly just her bumcheeks recolored gray. The GBA re-release turned it into a loincloth.

Summon Magic: Possibly the weakest in series, although it's justified in that we summon the dead Espers, and the fact that the main point of Espers, or rather the magicite, is to enable the use of magic by normal people. There is also a lot of variety . It has the traditional "major elemental attack" set (Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, etc.) and status inflicting ones (Caith Sith, Catoblepas, Phantom, etc.). Then it has a few oddball ones, like Golem, which acts as a physical damage absorbing shield till he runs out of HP, or Quetzalli, which initiates a full party jump attack. You may only get to summon an Esper once per character per battle, but they at least serve more strategic roles than arguably any other game in the series.

Take That: In the GBA version, a Figaro guard mentions that there were some Kefka worshippers who insist on spelling Kefka's name with "C's" which is both a reference to Kefka's Japanese spelling of his name, as well as poking fun at certain fans who insist on spelling Kefka's name the Japanese way.

Take Your Time: Averted in World of Ruin, where Kefka is not in a hurry himself. Also generally averted in the main plot itself: it's clear that things are happening, but if there isn't a timer on the screen, it's generally a justifiably longer process (military invasion, massive troop movements, etc) that proceeds at the speed of plot, allowing you to level grind.

Taking You with Me: Several bosses, the most annoying example being the Magic Master on the top of Cultists' tower. The Reraise spell is your friend.

Talking Is a Free Action: If Terra casts magic during the second boss battle against the two Magitek Armorsnote or any battle in which she uses magic in front of Edgar for the first time; it doesn't have to be this specific battle, Edgar has a minor freak-out which leads to Locke having one as well, leading to an in-combat cutscene. The whole thing lasts about two or three minutes depending on your reading speed, if you don't just button-spam through the resulting dialogue. Meanwhile there's these two Imperial soldiers with heavily-armed battle tanks, sitting there and patiently waiting...

A Taste of Power: At the beginning, you control Terra and two soldiers, all in suits of powerful Magitek Armor. The soldiers level up quickly and with the exception of the boss, everything you face is easily defeated, with damage healed quickly from another, very powerful healing ability in the armors. It lasts for about 5 minutes until the two soldiers are killed and Terra's armor is destroyed.

Tears from a Stone: In the Ancient City, the petrified Queen cries a tear that transforms the Esper Odin into Raiden. Partially justified with a legend found in the same city that explains why.

Technicolor Death: Enemies vanish in a purplish fade, and bosses flash and turn red before shaking away noisily, or they sometimes just dissipate in a sort of wave which represents escaping.

Teen Pregnancy: Two background NPCs, Katarin with Duane's child. The subject is touched upon very briefly and without any of the themes associated with the trope. The birth of their child is actually seen as a metaphor for the rebirth of the world in the game's epilogue.

"They Still Belong to Us" Lecture: Kefka at one point tries to convince the party that Celes has been a mole in their ranks since joining (she's not). He actually manages to plant some seeds of doubt in Locke, causing Celes to become somewhat distant towards him later on. Locke's doubt is helped somewhat by the fact that the infiltration of the Magitek Research Facility was suspiciously easy, and the fact that Celes doesn't immediately try to counter Kefka's arguments, though he later admits that the doubt was "just for a moment".

Three Lines Some Waiting: Early in the game, Locke goes to South Figaro to stall the Empire, and later when going through the Lethe river Sabin is separated from the party. You are then given the choice on who to play first: Locke, Sabin or the rest of the party.

Throwaway Country: Doma. The sacked cities on the southern continent also count to a lesser extent as they are still functioning towns, just under Imperial control for most of the game.

Throw It In: In-universe example: After stopping Ultros from attempting to drop a 4-ton weight on Celes, Locke accidentally ends up briefly ruining the opera by knocking out the male star and his rival suitor, and had to improvise for the mishap as best as he can by making it seem as though Ultros' duel was part of the play.

Time Keeps On Ticking: The timer in timed sequences keeps going even if you go into the menu; the only way to pause it is to pause a battle.

Timed Mission: Many, among them stopping Ultros before he drops the 4-ton weight on Celes, talking to Imperial soldiers before the banquet preparations are complete, escaping the collapsing Floating Continent, and others...

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: The third movement of "Dancing Mad" uses an exact reconstruction of part of its melody. It would appear that Uematsu used all of his classical music knowledge in the different stages of "Dancing Mad".

Took a Level in Badass: Every enemy in Mt. Zozo in the Advance remake. The Evade bug in the Super NES release was fixed, so now suddenly all the monsters in the area have an amazingly high chance of dodging normal attacks, forcing you to rely on special attacks and magic. Or to equip a relic which increases the hit percentage of normal attacks.

Tragic Keepsake: Darill's airship, the Falcon. When Setzer found it's wreckage, he restored it, then sealed it in Darill's Tomb. After Kefka ruins the world, which destroyed Setzer's airship, he retrieves the Falcon to reunite the rest of the party and to defeat Kefka.

Tutorial Failure: Many, many players struggled to perform Sabin's Blitzes. The in-game tutorial says "Choose Blitz, press the Control Pad left, right, left, then press the A button!" While technically correct, the game fails to mention that you're supposed to input the command while an otherwise innocuous arrow is pointing at Sabin. Most new players will try instead to press A while the arrow's up (since the arrow is usually the means to select the target character of a given action), then hastily input the Blitz, which is already way too late. The game will never try to correct your timing even after dozens of failed attempts, so naturally, many players just think they haven't inputted the button combination fast enough.

Two-Headed Coin: Used against Setzer and in Edgar & Sabin's backstory to guarantee the former the throne and the latter his freedom.

Uncommon Time: The final movement of "Dancing Mad" alternates mostly between 4/4 and 7/8, although a few measures are in 2/2. "Another World of Beasts" is in 7/4 and "The Unforgiven" in 10/8.

Relm. Despite being a ten-year-old with no training, she joins your party at roughly the same level all your other characters will be at, after your party has already successfully fought the Empire to a truce. Her magical abilities may be justified by her Thamasan blood, but her ability to swing a mace and take hits in combat is completely unexplained.

While not as severe a case as the Relm, who joins even later and clearly less fit as a physical fighter, Setzer would also count. The game never explains why he is so good with a sword, no where in his backstory has he ever trained or had to fight battles, yet he still able to keep up with the others from the moment he joins. He is strong enough that the empires strongest regular soldiers defending their capital are mere mooks to him when he joins!

Actually manages to shift RPG genres between Eastern and Western during the World of Ruin, where pretty much every section besides Kefka's Tower is not necessary to complete the game once you get your airship.

"Hey, who put this Opera in my Final Fantasy? Oh, who cares; Celes' Opera solo is a thing of beauty."

It's debatable if Setzer was giving the tutorial of the airship controls to the party and everyone can pilot it, or it was simply for the player's benefit and he still controls it. Edgar does pilot it at some point in the plot, though (he crashes, but it's not really his fault).

In the SNES version, there is a scene with Sabin and Cyan where the player is lead to believe that the Magitek armor's controls are largely intuitive... for anyone who's not a complete luddite (as demonstrated by Cyan's spastic donuts in the Empire's camp after the poisoning of Doma Castle).

Upgrade Artifact: Magicite, though it's more of a case of speeding up the training instead of instant powers.

Urban Segregation: Jidoor is an extreme case, where the middle class live in the south of the town and the rich live in the north of town, and the richest man in town stays in a very large mansion at the very north. The poor faced endless pressure by the other citizens, and they eventually left and founded a town in the mountains, named Zozo, which ended up becoming a total hellhole. Later, Vector is split into three parts. The bottom is inhabited by Returner sympathizers and thieves, the upper part is patrolled by Imperial soldiers, and the top holds the massive Imperial Palace.

Useless Useful Spell: Averted with instant-death spells and techniques if you're willing to abuse a Good Bad Bug involving the Vanish effect. Played straight with most other status effects like Confuse: every spell does have a specific use, but they are tend to be very situationalnote The most notable is using Berserk on the Magi Master in Fanatic's Tower, followed by Vanish to render him combat ineffective; this also works on most enemies with powerful magic attacks but weak physical attacks. The wide variety of spells does allow for creative solutions to problems, however.

Vice City: Zozo and Vector. Zozo is full of burglars, insane mechanics, spellcasting dancers, and even giants, all of whom attack you in random encounters, and in Vector, there is a rather roguish man who might steal your money (1000 gil) if you sleep at his inn.

Video Game Stealing: Including clothes, which is necessary for Locke's sub-plot in South Figaro.

Video Game Caring Potential: Some players saved and reloaded several times while figuring out the fishing game, to make sure that Cid lived.

Video Game Cruelty Potential: Others deliberately let Cid die, claiming it gives Celes more development (and that it's not worth the fishing game)note If Cid dies, Celes gives up as well, only to find that her friends may be alive, prompting her to set off on a journey to find them and tying into the hope theme that pervades the second half of the game. If Cid lives, he just tells Celes her friends must be alive and here! Take this raft and have fun.

Villain World: In the World of Ruin, Kefka is God. His tower dominates the main landmass, people live in fear of him, there's another tower built by a cult dedicated to him, most of your party members have given up any hope of trying to defeat him and turned their attention to personal matters, and in some cases they've just given up on life altogether.

Violation of Common Sense: Lampshaded when choosing to jump or not to jump into the huge waterfall, where refusal is titled "Are you crazy!?"

Visible Invisibility: The Invisible party members are visible as outlines. The enemies on other hand are completely invisible.

Wake-Up Call Boss: At Narshe, Kefka prominently uses a very powerful Blizzara spell, a Drain spell to heal himself, has a decent physical blow, and a fair amount of HP. Up until him a few other bosses used magic too, but they had various weaknesses (poor HP, Revive Kills Zombie, etc) that made them less of a threat than they would be otherwise. Kefka did not suffer these problems, and unless you brought Celes to the fight so she could Runic his spells, he is very powerful. You're also penalized that you may not have a full party, unless you planned to fight through all his troops with one group of allies instead of dividing the load, which can potentially leave you drained of MP and/or healing items by the time you get to him.

Walk and Talk: The developers seem to have LOVED this trope. If the heroes have to go somewhere else there's usually a cutscene showing them going there, which allows for a conversation (or multiple conversations) to take place.

Walk It Off: The Tintinnabulum relic, which restores a bit of health for the every step the wearer takes.

Warmup Boss: Ymir (also known as Whelk on the SNES and PSX versions) the giant lightning-absorbing snail.

Water Is Air: Besides the need of diving equipment, fighting in the serpent trench is the same as above water. One should also ask how three men are sharing a single diving helmet.

Banon and Arvis are nowhere to be found in the World of Ruin. It's likely they were killed when the world was demolished, or by Gestahl if they were still in Vector when he dropped the Heel-Face Turn facade. The fact Locke and Edgar, who have been friends with them since many years before the start of the game, seemingly forget they ever existed is rather inexplicable, though.

Vargas is another possibility. While it's likely he was killed in his only appearance, he didn't have the usual death animation of most enemies. Nonetheless, he's never seen nor mentioned again after that.

The lone Doma sentry who splits up from Cyan to help him search for survivors after the castle's water supply gets poisoned by Kefka. He's never seen or heard from again after the Imperial withdrawal from Doma or the World of Ruin.

Why Don't You Just Stab Him?: Averted in a rare heroic example by Celes, who rather practically stabs Kefka while his back is turned right before he destroys the world. Unfortunately it wasn't a fatal blow.

Wide Open Sandbox: The entire World of Ruin, after you get the airship, is nothing but voluntary character-centric sidequests, which was a really big deal at the time. It fits the plot of the game at that point, as all that's left is Kefka's tower, but you need to find your allies to stand a chance.

Womb Level: The Zone Eater's Belly. Kind of. The place isn't very organic, since it looks the same as any other cave and features the most random of enemies, like ninjas, dancers, frogs, thieves, demons, cursed samurai, and even flying zombies.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: It's hinted that Kefka doesn't destroy because he finds it fun, but because he's so insane from Magitek experiments corroding his mind that he can't feel love and friendship anymore, and now causing death and destruction is the only thing that can make him happy.

World Sundering: World of Ruin. "On that day, the world was changed forever...".

Wretched Hive: Zozo, a town far up in the rainy mountains where corpses and garbage rot in the streets, and there are actually random encounters, both indoors and outside, and even an end boss.

Wutai: The Kingdom of Doma is a technologically simplistic yet respectable nation guarded by samurai like Cyan. Later on, there's the Ancient Castle, where the ghosts of long-gone Samurai warriors can be encountered in random battles, along with the eastern-looking Blue Dragon and the recurring summoned character Odin making an appearance.

Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Cyan in the US version. It's fixed up in the GBA version. Really well, too. His thee/thou differentiation is accurate most of the time.

You Are Number Six: Two bosses in the Magitek Lab, both presumably Magitek creations of Cid.

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